Sean McGuire: What do England fans base expectations on?

Nov 29 2007 by Sean McGuire, Liverpool Daily Post

Gone but not forgotten

MANAGEMENT teams play a crucial role in football clubs.

The days of having a manager, a coach and the bloke who runs on with the sponge are now distant memories.

Even so, I was surprised that nine members of the backroom staff left Derby County.

That’s a lot of cooks to work with, in Premier League terms, are not the best quality ingredients.

I do have some sympathy with former Rams manager Billy Davies who scared his chairman into action by demanding the chequebook for the January transfer window.

After all, Davies has consistently said that promotion actually came too early for his club. It is only 18 months since Derby finished the season in 20th position in the Championship.

That explosive improvement, and the consequent raising of expectations way beyond what was reasonable, has cost Davies and his army of assistants their jobs.

But his departure and the fact that he was linked with the Scotland job the moment it became vacant would suggest he will not be unemployed for long.

But the managerial merry-go-round is beginning to resemble a game of musical chairs.

A batch of clubs and countries are selecting from a fairly limited and unamb-itious pool of managers.

A run of unsuccessful assistant managers seems to have put paid to any internal promotions while clubs seem reluctant to pluck a manager from the lower leagues unless he has an outstanding playing career filling his CV.

And while Paul Jewell, Sam Allardyce, Billy Davies, Lawrie Sanchez, Steve McClaren and Gareth Southgate amongst others may not all lose and find a job, and maybe even lose it again, before 12 months has passed, you can be sure that several of them will.

Well, except for perhaps Steve McClaren who can now afford to improve his tan for the foreseeable future after getting a golden ‘Harvey Smith’.

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